There is an old joke about the definition of chutzpah being someone who kills his parents and then asks for mercy from the judge because he's an orphan.
Now we have the journalist equivalent. Alex Berenson has an article in today's NYT: "US Wonders If Drug Data Was Accurate." You might recall Berenson helped ferret documents in violation of a court order to help build a biased case against Eli Lilly about well known side effects about Zyprexa and who was slammed by Judge Harvey Weinstein for doing so. And now he is writing about Zyprexa using the same documents he stole. Once again, Berenson uses the "one paper out of several thousands of documents" approach to depict Lilly as a criminal corporation.
And then at the end of the article Berenson writes: "A federal judge has criticized The Times for violating a protective order that covered the documents."
C'mon Alex we can be more accurate. We have the actual transcript describing YOUR behavior without violating the protective order. Didn't Judge Weinstein describe what you did as conspiring " to obtain and publish documents in knowing violation of a court order not to do so, and that they executed the conspiracy using other people as their agents in crime."
And as another report noted, Weinstein further described the actions of the men as "illegal," "stealing," a "brazen flouting" of his order and, in the case of Berenson, "reprehensible." He took occasion to quote from a 2004 version of the Times' handbook on ethical journalism: "Staff members must obey the law in pursuit of news."
On the heels of intense criticism of the NYT coverage of the Duke rape case and the paper's falling earnings, the Berenson reporting is another example of the Times decline.
Now we have the journalist equivalent. Alex Berenson has an article in today's NYT: "US Wonders If Drug Data Was Accurate." You might recall Berenson helped ferret documents in violation of a court order to help build a biased case against Eli Lilly about well known side effects about Zyprexa and who was slammed by Judge Harvey Weinstein for doing so. And now he is writing about Zyprexa using the same documents he stole. Once again, Berenson uses the "one paper out of several thousands of documents" approach to depict Lilly as a criminal corporation.
And then at the end of the article Berenson writes: "A federal judge has criticized The Times for violating a protective order that covered the documents."
C'mon Alex we can be more accurate. We have the actual transcript describing YOUR behavior without violating the protective order. Didn't Judge Weinstein describe what you did as conspiring " to obtain and publish documents in knowing violation of a court order not to do so, and that they executed the conspiracy using other people as their agents in crime."
And as another report noted, Weinstein further described the actions of the men as "illegal," "stealing," a "brazen flouting" of his order and, in the case of Berenson, "reprehensible." He took occasion to quote from a 2004 version of the Times' handbook on ethical journalism: "Staff members must obey the law in pursuit of news."
On the heels of intense criticism of the NYT coverage of the Duke rape case and the paper's falling earnings, the Berenson reporting is another example of the Times decline.
